Don't let Employee Appreciation Day pass without employee appreciation!

March 6th is comin' up fast, people...do your employees feel appreciated?

Let's be honest. Are they feeling like essential members of the team, critical factors in your company's success?

Or are they living under the constant threat of layoffs, wondering when their name will come up on the pink slip list? Or worse yet, under constant scrutiny lest they make a mistake and the discipline notices begin?

Countless studies have proven that employees who feel under appreciated and under the gun perform more poorly, have more accidents and provide lower quality customer service. And yet some companies never learn.

How is your company doing on employee appreciation? Could your company culture stand some improvement? Here are some tips for making real and lasting changes in the way your employees feel at work...and Employee Appreciation Day is the perfect day to start!

Here are some ideas for Employee Appreciation Day, and then some more for the rest of the year:

For March 6th, if you haven't already planned something, it's not too late to put together a little celebration:

Celebrate together. Order a cake, decorate the lunch rooms or break rooms and say thank you to everyone with an impromptu party.

Give everyone a thank you card with a small gift card inside. Do not give a gift card to your company's business -- go for a local grocery store, gas station or fast food restaurant. Make sure the card tells employees that they are most important asset your company has. And mean it.

Use March 6th to announce a new employee appreciation policy. Make each employee's birthday a paid holiday for them. Or make some days a "Bring-Your-Dog-To-Work-Day. Whatever your new policy is, the cost will be small compared to the value you'll gain from committed employees.

And from March 6th onward, make some real changes to show your staff that employee appreciation isn't just a day, it's a policy.

Send each employee a personally signed birthday card. And an employment anniversary card. Let them know that they are recognized and appreciated as individuals

Share information instead of letting them drown in rumors. Coming to work every day afraid of being RIF'd is no way to work. Let employees know exactly what's going on, and provide on-going feedback about their job security. If they're in line to be let go, let them know a month in advance so they can start a job search.

Provide training and job enrichment. One way to let employees know you appreciate them is to provide them with training and new ways to use their skills, talents and interests. Training is a powerful way to keep your employees motivated and add to the quality of your company at the same time.

Make saying thank you a company policy. A sincere thank you for a job well done, a heroic effort or just a helping hand goes a long way towards building employee satisfaction. make it a company policy to reward employees with a genuine thank you, in writing if possible. And let encourage supervisors and managers to file a copy in the employee's file, too. Knowing that those thank you's will be remembered at review time is an employee appreciation tool everyone will love.